Wow... I just finished watching Young Royals on Netflix and it's probably the best show I've ever seen in my life so I feel compelled to write about it.
If you haven't watched the show yet, you might wanna go watch it first before reading this because there will be spoilers.
Long story short, Young Royals is a Swedish TV show portraying a young Prince, Wilhelm, navigating his way at a boarding school he was forced to go to after his fighting incident. At this elite boarding school, he meets and befriends Simon, someone from a lower socio-economical background. Needless to say, THEY FELL IN LOVE #aw #welovethis!!! However, it's not that simple. Due to Prince Wilhelm's royal status and Erik, his elder brother's death, he bears enormous pressure in living up to the royal reputation and 'continuing' the family line. Thus, both Wilhelm and Simon are keeping their relationship on the down low. Until... a video of them having sex gets leaked and Wilhelm faces the dilemma of whether he should tell the truth to the public or deny all the rumours but ultimately lose Simon.
Okay... I promise it's not as boring as I made it sound and here's why:
Wilhelm and Simon's relationship: Their dialogue is so beautiful. There was this one very memorable scene where drunk Wilhelm confesses his true feelings for Simon after he broke things off because he feels pressured to live up to his elder brother's reputation as Crown Prince. He says something along the lines of "I realised that everything is fake. The grass is fake. People are fake. But I like you and that's not fake". That confession he made was so poetic and real; it made me feel something. After hearing this over the phone, Simon rushes to school and takes care of Wilhelm till the next morning, which brings me to my next point: their interaction is so raw and pure. Despite the disparity between their social status, we get these two characters who genuinely care so much about each other and are almost willing to do anything for each other. I don't think I've ever seen two characters with such a deep, intense and emotional connection.
August being the antagonist: August, who already studies at the Hillerska boarding school is Prince Wilhelm's second cousin. I think it's very easy to label August as the villain of this series but I feel like his character is more nuanced than that. I'd say he's the antagonist of this show. The reason why I say this is due to the fact that there are several reasons behind his seemingly hateful behaviour, however, they're not excuses. Firstly, it is revealed that his father committed suicide before he was sent to the boarding school and also that his family is struggling financially. Therefore, when Wilhelm exposes his financially issues to the rest of a private club, his bitter reaction was to release the video of Wilhelm and Simon having sex. Throughout the show, he also does things which are problematic and although they could be explained for, once again, I don't think they can be excuses.
Felice's character development: Initially I wasn’t a fan of Felice’s character because she was quite conceited and wanted to be with Wilhelm just because of his royal status. However, after her frantic and successful search for who outed Wilhelm and Simon, she can officially claim the award of “The character who developed the most”. Due to her elite family background, I think she almost feels pressured live up to her parents’ standards and be “perfect”. However, as the audience observes, this facade quickly crumbles when she is exposed by Sara during a parent’s lunch and she’s not as perfect as she seems. Furthermore, there’s a clever use of dramatic irony in this scene when Felice kisses Wilhelm because although the audience feels frustrated as they know Wilhelm is with Simon, they also forget that Felice doesn’t know that. What I admired the most about Felice is her courage to stand her ground and to speak up. After Wilhelm and Simon got outed, while everyone was gossiping or being homophobic, Felice was genuinely concerned about them and was the only one determined to find out who released the video.
Also, can someone explain to me why Wilhelm broke the fourth wall at the beginning and the end of the series? My far-fetched interpretation is that he hopes to find a way to physically and metaphorically escape his royal life, to be free from all the responsibilities and burdens that comes with being royalty and just be a 'normal' human being. To communicate to the audience that even though he's royalty, he's not that different from everyone else - he also has his own struggles and his life isn't perfect as the media portrays.
Anyway, I've said enough. I'd 100% recommend everyone to watch this show. I've never seen anything like this before, it's really special ;)
